


Transition

by blindmadness



Category: Whiplash (2014)
Genre: F/M, Nicole deserves better than this trash jazz hell, Post-Canon, honestly what even is this, past Andrew/Nicole
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 07:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7035007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blindmadness/pseuds/blindmadness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andrew Neiman turns out to have been the least of Nicole's problems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transition

**Author's Note:**

  * For [holograms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/holograms/gifts).



> This was meant to be last year's birthday present to [holograms](http://archiveofourown.org/users/holograms), but ended up massively delayed, partly due to my inability to end things and partly due to my inability to _edit_ things. So it was too late to even be THIS year's birthday present, for which I'm incredibly sorry, but happy super belated birthday(s), my most gloriously sinful friend.  <3
> 
> Since it's been so long, I literally don't even remember anymore what inspired this, OOPS-- I think we talked about the scenario, or something like it, and I of course took it further into sheer ridiculousness, because that's what I do. So this is almost certainly the baby swan among the ducklings of this fandom, but I hope you enjoy it regardless. :'D
> 
> Title is from a Buddy Rich album, because I am a _terrible person._

Nicole hangs up and sighs, letting her hand fall absently into her lap, fingers still curled around the phone. She stares at it for a moment, studying the end-call screen, Andrew’s contact information. She’s not quite sure why she still has his name in her phone. She’ll probably delete it after this.

“I can’t believe he called me,” she mutters, and feels the warm pressure of her boyfriend’s hand creep into hers, squeezing lightly.

She squeezes back, comforted, raising her eyes to his concerned face. “You okay?” he asks.

Nicole nods. “Yeah. I’m—yeah. I mean, I can’t believe he called, but I’m sort of glad he did, you know? Now I know for sure that—you know, that things are definitely over. I don’t think I’ll hear from him again.”

Her boyfriend smiles at her, and Nicole smiles back, feeling intensely grateful for him. Exactly what she needed after the brief but thorough disaster that was Andrew Neiman—a nice, warm, affectionate, _normal_ guy. They’ve only been dating for a few weeks, but it’s been going so well. For once, she’s gotten exactly what she needs.

“You don’t know anything about this JV jazz thing, do you?” she asks without thinking, wrinkling her nose at his grimace. “Yeah, I didn’t think so. Can you believe he invited me? Can you believe I felt a little bad saying no?” She laughs quietly, squeezing his hand again. “I’m glad I could use you an excuse, though. I know how much you hate jazz.”

Instead of smiling back at her, though, he winces, untangling his hand from hers. Nicole frowns at him in concern and he rubs at the back of his neck, avoiding her gaze. “Look,” he says slowly. “I—I should tell you something.”

Well, that doesn’t sound good. “What?” Nicole asks, trying to keep her voice relatively calm, though her heart is sinking. She knew, _knew_ that this was too good to be true.

“I didn’t always hate jazz,” he says slowly, looking more awkward than she’s ever seen him. “I used to love it. I—I played it, actually. I was a drummer, at Schaffer.”

It takes a truly enormous amount of effort for Nicole to keep her jaw from dropping. “Seriously?” she asks, incredulous. She’s told him about Andrew—not in a lot of detail, but the basics. Enough for him to know what a bombshell this is. How did this never come up?

“Yeah. I, uh—” Now he looks even more embarrassed, but he does manage to meet her eyes. “I even knew Andrew, too. We were in the same band. Twice, actually.”

_Holy shit._ Nicole’s emotions shift, in an instant, from bewilderment to anger. “And you never mentioned this—why?”

He shrugs, looking away again; Nicole notices that his ears have gone red. “I was trying to forget about it, I guess. It was—I mean, by the end it really sucked. A lot of shit went down. I didn’t want to think about it anymore. And I guess I didn’t want you to think that I’d—he treated you like crap, you know? I didn’t want you to think I’d be like that, too.”

“And lying to me was better?” Nicole hops off the bed to face him, scowling. “Did you not think I’d be pissed when I found out? Did you really think it would never come up?”

“Nicole,” he pleads, his expression apologetic now. “Come on.”

Before Andrew, Nicole probably would have forgiven him immediately, or at least seriously considered it. She would have tried her hardest to understand where he was coming from. But she’s not going to go through something like that again. No matter how nice this has been, she just can’t do it. She’s not going to take the risk.

“I’m sorry, Ryan,” she says, and means it. “I think you need to go.”

 

It takes her _months_ to even be interested in dating again. She’d really like to have a boyfriend, but her last two attempts were so depressing, it barely seems worth pursuing again.

Still, her roommate insists that her cousin knows this great guy, and Nicole finally gives in, though it doesn’t take her long to sort of regret it. Sure, Carl’s cute enough, and his family’s rich, which means he takes her to a nice restaurant, and he’s pre-med, which must mean he’s smart. But she’s pretty much stopped feeling terribly hopeful about the evening by the time they get their menus. She doesn’t expect to be treated like a princess or anything, but Carl hasn’t even tried to hold any doors for her or pull her chair out, and she’s pretty sure she just caught him checking out their very handsome waiter, which is just depressing.

Well, she thinks as she studies the menu (everything but the tiny appetizers way past what she could usually afford), she’s pretty sure there won’t be a second date. She might as well try to have some fun while she’s here.

“What’s good here?” she asks, looking up and attempting a genuine smile at Carl.

He shrugs, his eyes still on the menu. “I’ve never been here before. But it has good reviews and a long wine list.”

Nicole doesn’t bother pointing out that she’s not twenty-one yet. She gives it a minute, then tries again. “So—Chelsea said you were pre-med? Did you always want to be a doctor?”

Carl looks up at that, blinking as if her very simple question is incomprehensible. “No,” he says after a brief, awkward pause, still looking a little thrown. “I don’t even know for sure if that’s what I’ll do. But the degree will open a lot of doors for me, whatever I do decide.”

Nicole nods, because she’s not really sure how to respond to that. Who in the world, she wonders, goes into pre-med without knowing for sure that they want to be a doctor?

They sit in silence for another minute; it’s pretty clear Carl doesn’t have any intention of actually asking her about herself. Nicole idly kicks her feet as she tries to decide on a meal, wondering why he even bothered agreeing to the date if he clearly has no interest in being there.

A song begins to play in the restaurant that Nicole thinks she vaguely recognizes— _jazz,_ she thinks with a resigned sigh. She looks over at Carl and is surprised to notice that he’s huffing out his own sigh of irritation, glaring up at the speakers like they’ve personally offended him.

“You okay?” she asks, curious.

Carl sighs, shaking his head as he turns his scowl towards the menu instead. “Sorry,” he says, and Nicole’s pleasantly surprised that he seems to have decided to actually have consideration for her feelings. “I just—I hate jazz.”

Nicole finds herself smiling faintly. Maybe they have something in common after all. “I don’t really like it either,” she says, scooting forward on her chair. 

Carl shoots her a little half-smile of his own, which does wonders for endearing him to Nicole. “That’s good to hear. I spent way too much of my life with people who didn’t agree.”

Something about his tone dims Nicole’s excitement just a little. “You—used to like it?” she asks tentatively.

Carl snorts, setting aside the menu for the wine list. “Like it? I used to _live_ it. I played the drums. I wanted to be a fucking jazz musician for a living.”

Warning bells are beginning to sound in Nicole’s head. “Let me guess,” she finds herself saying, tone coming out sharper than she intended. “You went to Schaffer?”

Carl’s eyebrows go up, his startled gaze meeting hers. “How did you know?”

Nicole stares at him in horror. How is this possible? How can this be coming up _again?_ “Do you—you don’t _know_ Ryan Connolly or Andrew Neiman, do you?”

Carl is now looking at her like she might be a witch or something. “Well—yeah. We were in studio band together. Well—sort of.”

_Oh my god,_ Nicole thinks, lowering her head into her hands, barely registering Carl’s continued clarification about his experience in the band, _this cannot be happening to me._ Carl’s voice is rising a little now, talking angrily about someone named Fletcher, and she thinks she hears “fucking _Neiman”_ at one point, but she’s too busy contemplating her own problems to pay much attention.

“How many people are in New York City?” she asks as she raises her head, way past caring about the fact that she’s cutting Carl off mid-rant.

He blinks at her, looking a little wary, before responding slowly, “Uh… over eight million. Why?”

“Eight million,” Nicole repeats, slowly, the words falling from her mouth like a curse. “Eight _fucking_ million.”

“Hey, are you okay?” Carl’s actually looking concerned, which would have made Nicole feel way better about him two minutes ago. Now, she barely registers it.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him, and she means it. There clearly wouldn’t have been a second date anyway, but this, at least, isn’t his fault. “I can’t do this.” And she closes the menu and walks out, likely leaving an extremely confused former jazz drummer in her wake.

 

The next day, Nicole Googles “Fletcher” and “Schaffer” and finds a whole slew of results, equally praising and damning, and her eyes go wider and wider the more she finds out—about his competition results, about his firing, about Sean Casey. For the first time in weeks, she finds herself thinking of Andrew with some sympathy; his dismissiveness, Ryan’s lies, and Carl’s anger all make much more sense now.

She finds, too, a list of his performances, and before she can think better of it, memorizes the address of one scheduled for next Friday. She tells herself that she’s probably not going to make any use of the information; she’ll probably be busy that day, getting a head start on homework or going out with Chelsea or something.

But come Friday, she has no work left to do for Monday, and Chelsea’s spending the weekend at her girlfriend’s, so when eight o’clock rolls around, Nicole finds herself slipping into a jazz club, her eyes quickly seeking out the man at the piano.

He looks, to her surprise, like a normal human. She’s sort of been picturing him with horns and a tail, or a constant maniacal laugh or something. But when he talks to the audience between songs, he’s soft-spoken, lightly self-effacing, and quick to draw laughter from the crowd. If she didn’t know who he really was, she’d be fooled, too.

Instead she leans back against the wall, arms crossed, and watches him impassively until the performance is over. Then, as the audience applauds, she watches as Fletcher nods graciously and makes his exit, and she winds her way through the crowd to follow him out onto the street, and she calls to his retreating back, “Hey! Fletcher!”

He stops, pausing before turning around, and studies her with no expression but pleasant query on his face. She’s pretty sure, though, that she’s not what he’s expecting. “Can I help you?” he asks, in that same mild voice from the stage.

For a moment, Nicole’s paralyzed. It turns out she hasn’t exactly thought this through at all; she has no idea what to actually say to him, now that she’s here. All she really wanted to do was confront him in some way, face down the man who’s inadvertently been responsible for all her romantic failures. She supposes she sort of thought the words would come to her once she saw him, and she’s beginning to think that that might have been a mistake.

So she just halfheartedly glares at him for a moment, this man she’s never met before who has no idea who she is and probably couldn’t care less, and the words slip out before she can think better of them: “Fuck you!”

He blinks, looking much less shocked than a normal person would under these circumstances (Nicole wonders distantly if he’s just become accustomed to people saying that to him), but there’s definite surprise on his face. “Excuse me?” he asks, his tone still no more than politely interested.

Nicole’s sort of regretting doing this at all, at this point, but she’s come too far to back down now. She forces herself to keep looking at him as the words tumble out of her, fueled by uncertainty and frustration. “You’re a horrible person. You know that? You’re just—you’re just awful. You’ve ruined multiple people’s lives for—I don’t even know why! I can’t imagine why you do it. Your former musicians are so fucked up, I can’t even believe it. And normally I wouldn’t really care, but I keep running into them! I keep trying to _date_ them. So you’re kind of fucking up _my_ life, too, and that’s—it’s just really not cool. And I know I’m just some girl, like, you have no idea who I am and you don’t even care—but I had to tell you. I had to make sure you heard it from someone. You’re the _worst.”_

Fletcher’s expression slackens a little as she talks, staring at her in growing incredulity, and Nicole can’t tell if she’s feeling any sort of satisfaction from it. She feels like she should try to say something else—something to cap off the rant, something scathing and pithy and especially memorable—but she feels spent, and she’s not sure if she has that kind of venom left in her. So she just takes a deep breath, glares at him one last time, and leaves.

 

The next day, Nicole looks into the college transfer process and flights back home to Arizona. If this isn’t a sign telling her to get the hell out of New York, she’s not sure what is.


End file.
